Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women's Filmmaking

By Bernadette Luciano and Susanna Scarparo

In recent years, Italian cinema has experienced a quiet revolution: the proliferation of films by women. But their thought-provoking work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Reframing Italy fills this gap. The book introduces readers to films and documentaries by recognized women directors such as Cristina Comencini, Wilma Labate, Alina Marazzi, Antonietta De Lillo, Marina Spada, and Francesca Comencini, as well as to filmmakers whose work has so far been undeservedly ignored. Through a thematically based analysis supported by case studies, Luciano and Scarparo argue that Italian women filmmakers, while not overtly feminist, are producing work that increasingly foregrounds female subjectivity from a variety of social, political, and cultural positions. This book, with its accompanying video interviews, explores the filmmakers' challenging relationship with a highly patriarchal cinema industry. The incisive readings of individual films demonstrate how women's rich cinematic production reframes the aesthetic of their cinematic fathers, re-positions relationships between mothers and daughters, functions as a space for remembering women's (hi)stories, and highlights pressing social issues such as immigration and workplace discrimination. This original and timely study makes an invaluable contribution to film studies and to the study of gender and culture in the early twenty-first century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612492964

Book preview

coverimage

REFRAMING

ITALY

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Editorial Board

Íñigo Sánchez-Llama, Series Editor

Brett Bowles

Elena Coda

Paul B. Dixon

Howard Mancing, Consulting Editor

Floyd Merrell, Consulting Editor

Susan Y. Clawson, Production Editor

Patricia Hart

Gwen Kirkpatrick

Allen G. Wood

Associate Editors

French

Jeanette Beer

Paul Benhamou

Willard Bohn

Gerard J. Brault

Thomas Broden

Mary Ann Caws

Glyn P. Norton

Allan H. Pasco

Gerald Prince

Roseann Runte

Ursula Tidd

Italian

Fiora A. Bassanese

Peter Carravetta

Benjamin Lawton

Franco Masciandaro

Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian

Fred M. Clark

Marta Peixoto

Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

Spanish and Spanish American

Maryellen Bieder

Catherine Connor

Ivy A. Corfis

Frederick A. de Armas

Edward Friedman

Charles Ganelin

David T. Gies

Roberto González Echevarría

David K. Herzberger

Emily Hicks

Djelal Kadir

Amy Kaminsky

Lucille Kerr

Howard Mancing

Floyd Merrell

Alberto Moreiras

Randolph D. Pope

Francisco Ruiz Ramón

Elżbieta Skl-odowska

Marcia Stephenson

Mario Valdés

volume 59

REFRAMING

ITALY

New Trends in Italian

Women’s Filmmaking

Bernadette Luciano and

Susanna Scarparo

Purdue University Press

West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright © 2013 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of

Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Template for interior design by Anita Noble;

template for cover by Heidi Branham.

Cover photo: film clip from Un’ora sola ti vorrei, dir. Alina Marazzi,

Bartlebyfilm, Venerdi, 2002. Reproduced with permission of the director.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Luciano, Bernadette.

Reframing Italy : new trends in Italian women’s filmmaking / Bernadette Luciano and Susanna Scarparo.

    pages cm. — (Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 59)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes filmography.

ISBN 978-1-55753-655-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61249-295-7 (epdf) — ISBN 978-1-61249-296-4 (epub)

1. Women motion picture producers and directors—Italy. 2. Women in the motion picture industry—Italy. 3. Motion pictures—Italy. 4. Women in motion pictures. 5. Motion pictures and women—Italy. I. Scarparo, Susanna, 1970– II. Title.

PN1995.9.W6L73 2013

791.43'6522—dc23                                   2013021721

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Introduction

Reframing Tradition

Reframing History

Reframing Society

Framing the Industry

Chapter Two

The Girls Are Watching Us: Reconsidering the Neorealist Child Protagonist

Re-appropriating Neorealism

Re-appropriating the Father–Son Relationship: Mi piace lavorare—Mobbing

Situating Girls in the Neapolitan Cinematic Landscape: Domenica

Impermeable Boundaries for an Island Girl: L’isola

Conclusion

Chapter Three

Reconfiguring the Mother–Daughter Relationship

A Mother’s Love: L’amore di Màrja

The White Space of Motherhood: Lo spazio bianco

Searching for a New Language: Il più bel giorno della mia vita

The Political Is Personal: Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Di madre in figlia, and Il terzo occhio

Chapter Four

Reinventing Our Mothers: Gendering History and Memory

Literary Mothers: Christine Cristina and Poesia che mi guardi

Gendering Politics: Il resto di niente and Cosmonauta

Reframing Feminism: Vogliamo anche le rose and Ragazze la vita trema

Conclusion

Chapter Five

Migration and Transnational Mobility

Relocations and Dislocations: La stoffa di Veronica, Sidelki, and Il mondo addosso

Mobile Encounters: L’appartamento and Come l’ombra

The Fantasy of Racial Mixing: Bianco e nero and Billo—Il Grand Dakhaar

Conclusion: Reconfiguring Home

Chapter Six

Women at Work: Negotiating the Contemporary Workplace

An Economy in Transition: Signorina Effe

The Violence of the New Economy: Mi piace lavorare—Mobbing

Framing a Precarious World: Riprendimi

Documentaries by and about Women and Work: Invisibili and Uno virgola due

Conclusion

Framing the Film Industry

Appendix

A Conversation with Contemporary Italian Women Filmmakers: Online Supplementary Material

Interviews with Selected Women Filmmakers

An Interview with Alina Marazzi

An Interview with Antonietta De Lillo

An Interview with Costanza Quatriglio

An Interview with Francesca Pirani

An Interview with Paola Sangiovanni

An Interview with Marina Spada

Credits

Notes

Works Cited

Filmography

Index

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we thank Italian women directors, who continue to make films despite all odds. We are profoundly indebted to all of those who shared their insights and experiences with us. We are particularly grateful to Francesca Pirani, Alina Marazzi, Antonietta De Lillo, Costanza Quatriglio, Paola Sangiovanni, and Marina Spada, who agreed to discuss their work in the interviews filmed in Rome in December 2010 and to have them included as the digital file that accompanies the book.

The anonymous reviewers of the manuscript engaged carefully and thoughtfully with our work. We thank them for their incisive observations, helpful suggestions, and enthusiasm for the project. We would also like to thank the Libreria del Cinema in Rome, for the stimulating debates that contributed to this book and to their assistance in helping us with source materials. We thank the many friends and colleagues whose generosity, encouragement, and support were invaluable in the writing of the book. Klaus Neumann read the full manuscript and offered insightful comments and invaluable editorial advice, and Gwyn Fox assisted with the index. Martina Migliorini, Stefano d’Amadio, and Francesca Pirani filmed and edited the interviews in Rome. Martina Depentor and Ellen MacRae assisted with the translating and subtitling back in Auckland, and Tim Page contributed his music, countless hours to the production of the video, and assistance with the book cover.

Special thanks also to our research assistants Teresa Tufano and Monica Rogers. Teresa conducted preliminary interviews in Italy, and Monica assisted with the preparation of the manuscript. We are also grateful to everyone at Purdue University Press and PSRL for their enthusiasm and support for the project: special thanks to our editor Elena Coda, to Purdue University Press director Charles Watkinson for his assistance with the video material, and to Susan Clawson for her sharpness and intelligent copyediting.

We are grateful to our respective institutions—The Faculty of Arts and the School of European Languages and Literatures at the University of Auckland and the Faculty of Arts and the School of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics at Monash University—for the periods of sabbatical and research leave that enabled us to conduct the interviews and research that were fundamental for the book.

Parts of Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 were published as Costanza Quatriglio: In Search of the Invisible, Studies in European Cinema 8.2 (2011): 115–27; ‘I bambini si guardano’: The Documentaries of Costanza Quatriglio, Studies in Documentary Film [P], (Bristol, UK: Intellect) 5.2–3 (2011): 183–96; "The Personal Is Still Political: Films ‘by and for Women’ by the New Documentariste," Italica 87.3 (2010): 488–500; ‘Vite sospese’: Representing Female Migration in Contemporary Italian Documentaries, Italian Studies 65.2 (July 2010): 192–203, http://www.maney.co.uk/journals/its, and http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/its; Gendering Gendering Mobility and Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema, The Italianist 30 (2010): 165–82. We thank these journals for their permission to include content from these articles.

Finally, we wish to thank Steele Burrow and Klaus Neumann for being on call for emergency readings and consultations in the gestation of the book, and we thank our sons, Alexander Luciano Burrow and Claudio Scarparo Neumann, for patiently enduring our endless cross-Tasman conversations. We thank you also for accompanying us to Rome during our periods of research and writing and sharing with us the excitement and challenges of life in Italy.

Chapter One

Introduction

On the eve of International Women’s Day 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director for her Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker. Announcing the winner, Barbra Streisand exclaimed, the time has come (qtd. in Quinn 1), implying that women had finally broken through the celluloid ceiling. Only the third woman ever to be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Director category, Bigelow eludes and rejects the designation of woman filmmaker. As a pioneer in the male-dominated world of action movies, she likes to think of herself as a filmmaker rather than as a female filmmaker (Weaver). At the same time she acknowledges the obstacles faced by women filmmakers and indeed all women professionals:

There’s really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. […] We all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can. So in that sense it’s very similar. On the other hand, I think the journey for women, no matter what venue it is—politics, business, film—it’s a long journey. (CBS/AP)

When in 2007 Jane Campion joined fellow winners on the stage at Cannes, her producer observed, You saw everyone who won a Palme D’Or up on the stage, and there was one woman, one in a sea of men.¹ When Campion had won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1993 for The Piano, many then, as in 2010, had thought that it was a watershed moment for women directors. But there is no magic wand that could reconfigure the industry: all of the films in competition for the Palme D’Or at the 2012 Cannes film festival were directed by men. Then, there was widespread protest against the absence of female filmmakers in competition at Cannes; for example, a letter published in Le Monde and signed by leading women filmmakers lamented that men love depth in women, but only in their cleavage (Allen). In his response, the chair of the committee responsible for the selection, Thierry Fremaux, referred to the lack of female directing talent (Allen).

The controversy surrounding Cannes in 2012 demonstrates that although women are making more films than ever before, it is still difficult for them to gain the level of recognition their male counterparts enjoy (Levitin, Plessis, and Raoul 26). As Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul argue, while statistics highlight an increase in women making films internationally, the numbers can be deceiving; many women filmmakers have only managed to make one film and have struggled to secure funding, particularly for major projects (10). According to Martha Lauzen, In 2012, women comprised 18% of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films (Lauzen 1). Of these, only 9% directed the top 250 films. This means that 89% of these films had no female directors (Lauzen 1). Lauzen also points out that Not one woman has ever been hired to direct an event picture with a budget of more than $100 million—the kind of film most valued by the Hollywood machine (qtd. in Abramowitz).

The situation in Italy is much the same. As Paola Randi, a promising young award-winning Italian director, argues, the major obstacle faced by women filmmakers is the industry’s lack of trust. The all-powerful (and predominantly male) producers do not believe that women are capable of managing a sizable budget or a large film crew, and for this reason do not entrust them with major projects destined for a large mainstream audience (Randi). Deborah Young, a renowned film critic and the only female director of an important Italian film festival, confirms Randi’s statement:

There is a certain amount of truth to the fact that entrusting women with a position of power and spending money and having influence […] there is still something cultural that doesn’t really like that, there is something cultural there that is against it. And in spite of the fact that Italy had a strong political movement, probably stronger than in America […] somehow feminism has never made the practical inroads that one would imagine […] you know a Western European country, a wealthy country, full of money and yet somehow women are not seen as leaders […] to be a leader you have to be really very strong and you have to have a lot of connections and somehow women in this country, they lack either one or the other. (Interview)

The Italian National Institute of Statistics reports that the number of women directors in Italy has increased significantly, with women representing 20% of the profession (30% if assistant directors are included), but women still need to prove themselves. Francesca Archibugi speaks for herself but also for other women filmmakers: Quando sei una donna tendono sempre ad accorciarti la statura, rispetto ad un regista maschio. Cioè prima di riconoscerti uno status di persona che ha delle cose da dire, devi faticare di più (When you’re a woman they always tend to cut you down, compared with a male director. That is, before they’ll recognize your status as a person who has things to say, you have to work harder) (Mascherini 172).²

The attitudes of producers are shared by male directors, regardless of their generation. For example, when asked why there are so few women directors, Marco Limberti, born in 1969, suggested that genetically women are not suited to the role:

Io trovo che nel dna della donna c’è qualcosa che fa sì che le donne siano più indicate a fare certi mestieri […]. L’aiuto regista è un incarico che la donna svolge molte bene, produzione in generale […] Le registe donne però salvo qualche rarissima eccezione non sono gran che adatte, però questo non toglie niente, perché se ce li smistiamo bene gli incarichi fa sì che ognuno lavori meglio nel ruolo che sta facendo. (Mascherini 174)

I find that in women’s DNA there’s something that makes them more suited to certain professions […] Assistant director is a role that women perform very well, that’s true of production roles in general. […] As directors however, apart from some extremely rare cases, women are not very well suited, but that’s not a problem, because if we delegate the tasks appropriately everyone works better in the role they’re carrying out.

Women filmmakers have also been the victims of film studies, which tends to ignore or omit women’s films—not consciously, but because the theory that informs the discipline is still largely only concerned with male filmmakers (Martin 29). In Italy even successful women directors have been marginalized both by film critics and in histories of Italian cinema. Women have been overlooked throughout the history of Italian cinema, although since its early days they have been involved in directing, producing, writing, and acting. But, as Monica Dall’Asta suggests, il clima misoginista nel quale si trovavano ad operare […] non contribuì certo a creare le condizioni ideali perché i loro talenti potessero esprimersi ed essere pubblicamente riconosciuti (the misogynist climate in which they found themselves operating […] certainly didn’t help create ideal conditions which would allow their talents to be expressed and be publicly recognized) (L’altra metà 10).

The case of Francesca Bertini exemplifies how women’s contributions, particularly as directors or co-directors, have often been disguised. As a diva, Bertini enjoyed public acclaim. However, despite the major part she played in directing her films, her name was never associated with that role (Dall’Asta, Il singolare 63). In her recent book, Non solo dive: pioniere del cinema italiano, Dall’Asta argues that in her days Bertini was probably the most powerful woman in the Italian film industry, more powerful than the majority of men in the sector. She was involved in the selection of actors and narratives, and made decisions about technical issues, editing, and publicity (Dall’Asta, Il singolare 63).³ She lamented that Bertini was never acknowledged for her contribution to the invention of neorealism, even though she had been a driving force behind Assunta Spina. Bertini’s claims were confirmed by Assunta Spina’s (acknowledged) director, Gustavo Serena. In an interview with Vittorio Martinelli, he recounts that Bertini was

così esaltata dal fatto di interpretare la parte di Assunta Spina, che era diventata un vulcano di idee, di iniziative, di suggerimenti. In perfetto dialetto napoletano, organizzava, comandava, spostava le comparse, il punto di vista, l’angolazione della macchina da presa; e se non era convinta di una scena, pretendeva di rifarla secondo le sue vedute. (qtd. in Martinelli, Il cinema 56)

so happy about playing the role of Assunta Spina, that she became a volcano of ideas, of initiatives, of suggestions. Speaking in perfect Neapolitan dialect, she organized, she commanded, she rearranged the extras, the point of view, the camera angle; and if she wasn’t convinced by a scene, she expected it to be redone according to her views.

Bertini herself thought that the history of Italian cinema, which had left her out, ought to be rewritten in its entirety (Dall’Asta, Il singolare 70). Her call for a different history has largely remained unanswered. As recently as 2009, Gian Piero Brunetta, Italy’s most respected film historian, made no mention of Bertini’s extensive contributions nor of those of Elvira Notari, the first and most prolific Italian woman director (Brunetta). The brilliant work of scholars such as Giuliana Bruno, who wrote the first monograph about Notari’s extraordinary career as director, producer, and founder of her own production and distribution company, has done little to change the fact that the history of Italian cinema continues to marginalize films made by women.⁴ Women’s contributions to Italian cinema, when acknowledged, are presented in much the same way in which women writers have traditionally been represented in histories of Italian literature, as the authors of minor or minority works. Women filmmakers are either discussed as a marginal group or as isolated cases; the history of Italian cinema is supposedly about fathers and sons, with occasional exceptions that prove the ostensibly universal (male) norm.⁵ For example, in a section titled Fathers, Sons, and Nephews, in which Brunetta discusses cinema from the boom years to the years of terrorism, he refers to significant contributions by Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmüller, who, however, remain invisible in the heading.

With Reframing Italy we are responding to Bertini’s challenge to rewrite the history of Italian cinema. We thereby follow in the footsteps of a growing number of scholars who have attempted to correct the misconception that, a few exceptions aside, women generally do not make films. Since 2000, there have been monographs and edited collections about Mexican, African, French, German, Middle Eastern, and Arab women filmmakers, about women filmmakers in early Hollywood, and about experimental filmmaking by women. Although there are chapters in English-language histories of Italian film and scholarly articles about some of the more widely recognized contemporary women filmmakers, such as Cristina Comencini, Francesca Comencini, Roberta Torre, and Francesca Archibugi, no monograph has been dedicated to the work of this new generation of filmmakers and their significant oeuvre. Written for an English-speaking public, Reframing Italy fills a major gap both in cinema studies and in studies of cinema’s engagement with contemporary Italian society.

Although our study does not assume any essential differences between men and women, it highlights the ways in which women’s experiences and relationships to society and history affect their filmmaking. The films that we discuss range from more experimental documentaries to mainstream features directed at a wider audience; yet Reframing Italy is not intended to provide a panoramic overview, which explains the absence of analyses of films by notable directors such as Sabina Guzzanti and Roberta Torre. Rather, this book is a thematically based analysis supported by case studies. We argue that the filmmakers we discuss foreground women’s perspectives. Many of our subjects are aware of the difficult position they occupy as women making films; however, the Italian women filmmakers of the new generation rarely identify with feminism, which they see as something belonging to a previous generation of Italian women. This attitude toward a feminism that is being conflated with the women’s liberation movement is consonant with attitudes in other Western countries, in which postfeminist discourses have become the dominant framework in discussions about gender. As Elana Levine observes, ‘Postfeminist culture takes feminism for granted, assuming that the movement’s successes have obviated the need for its continuation (138).

Unresolved tensions with feminism emerged repeatedly in our conversations with women directors. Antonietta De Lillo, for instance, while aware of the women’s movement’s significance, would not define her awareness as feminist:

Essere donna mi ha creato del disagio nel sentire il disagio altrui. Relazionarmi con una difficoltà dell’altro, non mia. Il femminismo, io ero troppo giovane per averlo vissuto. Anzi da giovane io lo vedevo come aggressivo, anche anti-femminile, invece poi penso che hanno avuto un gran ruolo. (Interview with Scarparo)

Being a woman has created an uneasiness in me, in sensing the uneasiness of others. To relate to someone else’s hardship, not my own. Feminism, I was too young to have lived through it. In fact, when I was young I saw it as aggressive, even antifeminine, but now I think that they played an important role.

Discussing Di madre in figlia (From Mother to Daughter, 2004), Fabiana Sargentini holds feminism’s theoretical and detached approach to understanding life responsible for her reservations about it. Although she appreciates feminism’s benefits and influence, she sees it as something belonging to the past and not to her present:

Hai detto femminista e va benissimo, però è come se queste cose che abbracciano di più un gruppo, teoriche, e che sono state necessarie in un momento storico, escono fuori ed esistono in me, e anche nelle mie storie, come una cosa vissuta, interna, […] come un materiale che in qualche modo ti ha cresciuto, ed è dentro la tua carne, e non è però […] come dire, non passa per il cervello, non è intellettualistico, è interno, vissuto, già elaborato, però più con pelle, la pancia, col corpo, col cuore più che con la testa. (Interview with Tufano)

You said feminist and that’s great, but it’s as if these things embraced by a theoretical group and that were necessary in a historical moment, come out and exist in me, and also in my stories, like something lived, internal, […] like a subject that has formed you, and is inside your flesh, but it’s not… how can I explain it, it’s not filtered by the brain, it’s not intellectual, it’s visceral, lived, already worked out, but felt more on your skin, in your stomach, in your body, with your heart rather than your head.

Alina Marazzi, who made Vogliamo anche le rose (We Want Roses Too, 2007) to understand and engage with the legacy of the women’s liberation movement, feels she has benefited from feminism but is not part of it:

Quando sono cresciuta io quella fase del femminismo pubblico in Italia era già finito. Magari per motivi di studio ti trovavi a leggere un libro, ma sono circuiti abbastanza chiusi in Italia. Io ho vissuto cinque anni a Londra e quando sono tornata negli anni ottanta quella roba non era molto accessibile. Sicuramente sono figlia di quella generazione, e quindi anche il fatto che abbia potuto accedere a questo tipo di lavoro, che abbia anche pensato di poter fare film significa che comunque le condizioni erano date perché io potessi fare una libera scelta. (Interview with Scarparo)

When I grew up, that phase of public feminism in Italy was already over. Perhaps you would find yourself reading a book for your studies, but they are fairly closed circles in Italy. I lived in London for five years and when I came back in the eighties that stuff wasn’t very accessible. I’m certainly the daughter of that generation, and as a result, the fact that I was also able to get this kind of job, that I had even considered myself capable of making films means the climate at the time made me able to choose freely.

Notwithstanding their complex relationship to feminism, it is useful to view these filmmakers in a perspective framed by feminist theories while recognizing that their works arise out of postfeminism and out of a suspicion of teleological narratives of redemption. They engage with the social conditions of contemporary Italy and with women’s multifaceted position within society in ways that would not have been possible without the feminist movement of the 1970s. At the same time their films are intricately bound by a complex relationship to a cinematic tradition that remains highly patriarchal. Hence, our theoretical framework is linked to feminist discourses on the subordinate and subaltern condition of women as producers and as subjects of aesthetic production. Their work, we suggest, suffers from a form of double marginality. Women filmmakers often embody degrees of subordination and marginality within the industry. In addition, when the subject matter of their films focuses on women, many spectators and critics consider their films marginal, accusing them of lacking universal appeal.

The concept of framing is central to the marginalization of women in cinema. Gilles Deleuze defines framing as a system that "includes everything which is present in the image—sets, characters and props" (Cinema 1 13; italics in original). Within this system, the frame is sometimes "conceived as a dynamic construction in act [en acte], which is closely linked to the scene, the image, the characters and the objects which fill it (14) and is crucial to what Deleuze calls the angle of framing" (Cinema 1 16) and the out-of field (Cinema 1 17). The angle of framing is an optical system that produces multiple and moving points of view, carefully arranging the elements in the frame, orchestrating their movement and the frame’s relationship with its constantly shifting boundaries. Out-of field refers to what is neither seen nor understood, but is nevertheless perfectly present and is determined by a mode of framing (Cinema 1 17). Deleuze builds on André Bazin’s earlier argument that the film frame is not a passive container but an active signifier; because the views within the frame are perpetually shifting, the frame’s organization of those views is forever in the process of making new significations. These new significations evoke an out-of field, which testifies to a more disturbing presence, one which cannot even be said to exist, but rather to ‘insist’ or ‘subsist,’ a more radical Elsewhere (Cinema 1 18).

The title of our book, Reframing Italy, alludes to this understanding of cinematic framing as an on-going process of creating new meanings that leads to a reframing of contemporary Italy from a female-centered perspective. We consider the notion of reframing on three levels: first, how women filmmakers have reframed cinematic tradition by appropriating and rethinking ways of imagining Italy through realistic cinema and less conventional cinematic modes and by challenging traditional representations of women through female-centered narratives; second, how they have reframed women’s history by rendering the history and stories of women and relationships between women visible in the cinematic space; and third, how these filmmakers are addressing pressing social issues through films that reframe Italy by engaging with changing national and transnational contexts from a position of gendered marginality. In the conclusion, we discuss how women directors and women from other professions in the industry are framing their relationship to an industry that continues to make it difficult for women to make and distribute films.

Reframing Tradition

The position of women’s cinema in Italy needs to be understood in terms of the filmmakers’ relationship to hegemonic traditions, as women filmmakers are not working in a vacuum but within an established cinematic tradition forged almost entirely by great fathers. The filmmakers we interviewed, while for the most part sharing Bigelow’s rejection of the label of woman filmmaker, repeatedly attributed the